The Cloud Appreciation Society aims to "fight 'blue-sky thinking' wherever we find it.'"

"Clouds really teach you about transience: They come, they go. Like thoughts, like feelings, like so many things," says a cloud appreciator, quoted in "Nature’s Best Poetry of 2019: Clouds/Every day, members of the Cloud Appreciation Society post photos of the sky from around the world. This is why they stop to look up" (NYT).

Lots of photographs at the link, of course, and the page is structured in a kind of fancy way that I found too... controlling. I prefer to make my own choices about when to look at pictures and when to see the text. Here's the Society's own on-line gallery if what you prefer to look at is not the NYT.

Do you need a reminder to notice the clouds? I'm always noticing clouds — and not just in my sunrise photographs, where clouds are what make all the difference — positive or negative — in the interestingness of the sunrise. I don't use my "clouds" tag in my sunrise pictures — not routinely, anyway — but I'm putting it here — in part so I can see my own cloud pictures.

When are people who notice clouds motivated to take a photograph of the clouds? Based on the NYT article, I see 3 completely different reasons: 1. It's an unusual type of cloud (e.g., mamma, lenticular), 2. It's a showily beautiful cloud (dramatic lighting, size, etc.), 3. It looks like something ("Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?"/"By the mass, and ‘tis like a camel, indeed"/"Methinks it is like a weasel"/"It is backed like a weasel"/"Or like a whale?"/"Very like a whale").